Whitelisting and other stuff

I'm not sure if this is the right location to post this topic and I apologize if it's not. However I'm slightly curious about the percentage of people you whitelist on the server. I'm not asking because I personally want to be whitelisted but instead to know what effects it has on the population of the server. From what I understand (and I may be wrong) there is a shortage of members on the server, thus not many people inhabiting the city's. I bring this up because I'm wondering how strict your rules are on letting people become members and if it's possible to loosen it up a little (if it is strict) so that we can have a lot more people be interested and join up quicker and in turn them see how cool and fun the people on the server are.

its pretty easy u just post on forums and read rules. then u get tested on a few rules to check if u read them.
Bukkit doesnt have a way to easily whitelist people yet (i think) so im pretty sure were not really whitelisting anyone until this is fixed.

We have plenty of people on the server usually around 10 to 16+ players online, and we also whitelist 99% of the people who apply, (unless they are jerks) But as you may know minecraft is not working as it should atm because they are moving to a new server. + The so called hey0 mod that provided most smp servers with plugins, commands, ranks and not to forget whitelist isn't being updated anymore. So instead we have switched to a newly developed system called bukkit witch is not fully complete yet. This is something that affect 99% of minecraft servers. Everything is a mess for everyone now. So I can assure you, as soon as everything is up and running again (hopefully soon) you are most welcome to join the server.

alllllrriiiiiighht..... I apologize for my ignorance. Thanks for answering my questions .

Also, on every server I've been on, 90% of the people on the whitelist come in maybe once a week for an hour or so, which makes the server seem smaller.

Yeah I can understand that. I know I get frustrated with my projects sometimes and just log off. It's nice to have a small amount of people on the server so it feels more "homie" but many times people get bored and it seems like he server can become empty quickly.